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      Arizona’s Adelita Grijalva sworn in after seven weeks in move that could force Epstein vote

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      Arizona Democrat Adelita Grijalva was sworn in by Mike Johnson, the US House speaker, on Wednesday, ending a seven-week standoff that prevented the incoming congresswoman from taking her seat and clearing the path for a vote to release the Jeffrey Epstein files.House Democrats burst into applause on the House floor when Grijalva took the oath of office during a ceremonial swearing in, shortly before the chamber was poised to take up legislation that would end the longest federal government shutdown in US history. The ceremony comes 49 days after Grijalva won a late September special election to succeed her father, the longtime congressman Raúl Grijalva, who died in March.Grijalva’s arrival does more than narrow the already razor-thin Republican majority. She has vowed to become the 218th and final signature on a discharge petition that would automatically trigger a House floor vote on legislation demanding the justice department release additional files on deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.Already on Wednesday morning, House oversight Democrats released “never-before-seen” Epstein emails that mention Trump, including a 2011 message to Ghislaine Maxwell in which Epstein wrote that Trump “spent hours at my house” with a sex trafficking victim, calling Trump a “dog that hasn’t barked”.A 2019 email to author Michael Wolff states that “of course [Trump] knew about the girls as he asked ghislaine to stop”.But lawmakers say many additional files remain sealed that for now leave unanswered questions about Epstein’s network and associates that a discharge petition could force the House to address.The petition, introduced by Kentucky congressman Thomas Massie and California congressman Ro Khanna in early September, needs just one more signature to force a vote under House rules. Support has come overwhelmingly from Democrats, though Republican representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert and Nancy Mace have also signed on.Democrats accused Johnson of blocking Grijalva’s swearing-in specifically to prevent the Epstein vote. Senator Ruben Gallego of Arizona said that Johnson was “covering up for pedophiles.”If the Epstein files legislation clears the House, it would still need Senate approval. But the vote itself would force lawmakers into an uncomfortable choice between voters demanding transparency about Epstein’s powerful associates and an actively discouraging Donald Trump administration who has pushed to avoid a deeper investigation.Epstein, a financier with connections to numerous high-profile figures, including Trump, died in federal custody in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. His death was ruled a suicide.While previous document releases have detailed some of his associations, lawmakers have argued that a significant tranche of information remains sealed in justice department files.Johnson kept the House out of session following Grijalva’s victory as part of a strategy to pressure Senate Democrats to vote to reopen the government during the shutdown. The Republican speaker claimed he could not administer the oath while the chamber remained inactive, though Grijalva won a week before the shutdown began and no such House rule exists prohibiting the swearing in of newly elected members during recesses.Democrats also widely rejected Johnson’s explanation, noting in a 180-signature letter that he had sworn in two Florida Republicans earlier this year while the House was out. Arizona’s Democratic attorney general, Kris Mayes, filed a lawsuit last month seeking to force Johnson to seat Grijalva.Johnson defended his actions by claiming he followed precedent set by former speaker Nancy Pelosi, who he said delayed similar ceremonies for Republicans. He insists his decision had nothing to do with avoiding an explosive vote on Epstein-related documents, though that ignores an intense pressure campaign from Trump allies attempting to spare the president from attention due to his longtime social ties with Epstein.Speaking to CNN on Tuesday, Grijalva said she plans to directly confront Johnson about the delay, calling the avoidance “undemocratic”, “unconstitutional” and “illegal”.“This kind of obstruction cannot happen again,” she said. More

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      Epstein’s emails stir new doubts over Trump’s past denials

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      Their content is cryptic and raises more questions than answers.Yet the tranche of emails on the Jeffrey Epstein affair released by Democrats in the House of Representatives show enough contradictions between their references to Donald Trump and the US president’s own previous utterances on the subject to fan a fresh wave of speculation and guesswork.An email sent by Epstein in April 2011 to Ghislaine Maxwell captures the intriguingly ambiguous tone.“I want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is Trump,” Epstein writes.Maxwell writes back: “I’ve been thinking about that.”“Victim [name redacted] spent hours at my house with him ,, he has never once been mentioned.” The White House has since identified the victim as Virginia Giuffre.Another Epstein email in January 2019 to the writer Michael Wolff – author of several books on Trump’s presidency – is more direct, yet tantalizingly incomplete.Once again mentioning a victim’s redacted name, it makes an unexplained reference to “Mara Lago” [sic], Trump’s Florida home and club, before going on to say, “Trump says he asked me to resign, never a member ever.”That comment may refer to reports that Trump once banned Epstein from Mar-a-Lago – according to some reports, for allegedly trying to seduce the teenage daughter of another member.Trump told reporters during his first presidency in July 2019 that he had banned Epstein but did not explain the reasons. “I did have a falling out a long time ago,” he said. “The reason doesn’t make any difference, frankly.”He has repeated the assertion several times while trying to dissociate himself from a man he once praised lavishly.Last summer, he said he had expelled Epstein for luring spa attendants away from Mar-a-Lago. Other accounts have suggested that the two men fell out after getting into a competitive bidding war over the same property in Palm Beach in 2004.In the email to Wolff, Epstein adds: “Of course he knew about the girls as he asked Ghislaine to stop.”While what Maxwell was asked to stop is unexplained, the assertion that Trump “knew about the girls” could raise doubts about the truthfulness of the president’s previous statements.Asked in the same 2019 encounter with journalists if he had “any suspicions that [Epstein] was molesting … underaged women”, Trump responded: “No, I had no idea. I had no idea. I haven’t spoken to him in many, many years.”That comment – while Epstein was in federal custody awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges – sits uneasily with what Trump told New York magazine in 2002.“I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy,” he said. “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it – Jeffrey enjoys his social life.”An email exchange released Wednesday between Epstein and Wolff in December 2015 – when Trump was running for the Republicans’ presidential nomination – alludes to damage that the pair’s past ties could cause Trump.“I think you should let him hang himself,” writes Wolff. “If he says he hasn’t been on the plane or in the house, then that gives you a valuable PR or political currency.“You can hang him in a way that potentially generates a positive benefit for you, or, if it really looks like he could win, you could save him, generating a debt.“Of course, it is possible that, when asked, he’ll say Jeffrey is a great guy and has gotten a raw deal and is victim of political correctness, which is to be outlawed in a Trump regime.”Since Epstein’s death and as revelations of his underage sex trafficking have proliferated, Trump has, on the contrary, tried to wash his hands of his once close friend – while emphasizing Epstein’s close ties to Bill Clinton.“I know [Clinton] was on his plane 27 times, and he said he was on the plane four times … And then the question you have to ask is: Did Bill Clinton go to the island?, Trump said in 2019 referring to an island owned by Epstein.“Because Epstein had an island that was not a good place, as I understand it. And I was never there. So you have to ask: Did Bill Clinton go to the island? If you find that out, you’re going to know a lot.”According to Rolling Stone, an unsealed document disclosed that Clinton and Trump flew on Epstein’s plane.Trump in recent years has gone out his way to express disdain for Epstein.“I was not a fan of Jeffrey Epstein … I threw him out of a club. I didn’t want anything to do with him. That was many, many years ago. It shows you one thing: that I have good taste. OK? Now, other people, they went all over with him. They went to his island. They went all over the place.”He has also indulged conspiracy theories circulating among his Maga supporters that Epstein’s death in a Manhattan prison cell may not have been suicide.Asked by the rightwing broadcaster Tucker Carlson in 2023 if Epstein may have been murdered, he said: “I don’t know … it’s possible. I mean, I don’t really believe – I think he probably committed suicide.“But there are those people, there are many people – I think you’re one of them, right? But a lot of people think that he was killed.”Amid the clamor to release the files, Trump was ambiguous – fanning unease that the latest email releases is unlikely to quell.Asked by Fox News during the 2024 presidential election campaign if he would release the Epstein files – along with the John F Kennedy and the September 11 attack files – he equivocated.“I guess I would. I think that less so because you don’t want to affect people’s lives if it’s phony stuff in there, because it’s a lot of phony stuff with that whole world,” he said. “I don’t know about Epstein so much as I do the others.”With segments of his base angered by the reneging on that vague promise, he has hit out at journalists and his opponents.“Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein? This guy’s been talked about for years,” he told a reporter who asked Pam Bondi, the attorney general, about the files at a cabinet meeting in July.“I can’t believe you’re asking a question on Epstein at a time like this, where we’re having some of the greatest success and also tragedy with what happened in Texas [where deadly floods had happened.] It just seems like a desecration.”He has also called the files a hoax and a creation of his political opponents, including Barack Obama.“They created the Epstein Files, just like they created the FAKE Hillary Clinton/Christopher Steele Dossier that they used on me, and now my so-called ‘friends’ are playing right into their hands,” he posted on his Truth Social platform. “Why didn’t these Radical Left Lunatics release the Epstein Files? If there was ANYTHING in there that could have hurt the MAGA Movement, why didn’t they use it?” More

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      Trump knew about Epstein’s conduct, newly released emails suggest

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      Damning new emails that suggest Donald Trump knew about the conduct of the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein were released Wednesday, including one in which Epstein said “of course [Trump] knew about the girls” procured for his sex-trafficking ring, and another that said Trump “spent hours” with one victim at Epstein’s house.The release of the three messages by Democrats on the House oversight committee is likely to heap significant pressure on the White House to publish in full the so-called Epstein files reportedly detailing the long-running scandal that has overshadowed Trump’s second term in office.Later on Wednesday, the committee’s Republican majority countered by releasing its own tranche of 23,000 documents, accusing Democrats of “cherry picking” the memos “to generate clickbait”.Trump, meanwhile, fired off a post to his Truth Social platform in which he said Democrats “are trying to bring up the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax again because they’ll do anything at all to deflect on how badly they’ve done on the Shutdown, and so many other subjects”.The president urged House members to focus instead on the upcoming vote to reopen the government: “There should be no deflections to Epstein or anything else, and any Republicans involved should be focused only on opening up our Country, and fixing the massive damage caused by the Democrats!”Numerous victims have said they were assaulted at Epstein’s infamous parties that took place at his home in New York, his Florida mansion and at his compound at Little St James in the US Virgin Islands, to which “clients” would be ferried by private jet.In one of the memos released Wednesday, Epstein alleged to his co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell in April 2011 that Trump had had a lengthy engagement in the company of one of the disgraced financier’s sex-trafficked victims.“I want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is trump.. [victim’s name redacted] spent hours at my house with him ,, he has never once been mentioned,” the message reads.In her reply, Maxwell says: “I have been thinking about that.”A second message, sent by Epstein to Trump biographer Michael Wolff in January 2019, indicates that Trump had asked him to resign from Mar-a-Lago, the president’s exclusive members-only club in Florida.But, Epstein says, he was “never a member ever” and adds “of course he knew about the girls as he asked Ghislaine to stop”.Epstein’s longtime friend and co-conspirator Maxwell is currently serving a 20-year sentence after her conviction for sex-trafficking crimes, including procuring girls to be abused.A third message, sent by Epstein to Wolff in December 2015, solicited the author’s advice about fashioning a response for Trump to questions CNN was reportedly preparing to ask him about their relationship.“If we were able to craft an answer for him, what do you think it should be?” Epstein asks.“I think you should let him hang himself,” Wolff responds.“If he says he hasn’t been on the plane or to the house, then that gives you a valuable PR and political currency. You can hang him in a way that potentially generates a positive benefit for you …“Of course, it is possible that, when asked, he’ll say Jeffrey is a great guy and has gotten a raw deal and is a victim of political correctness, which is to be outlawed in a Trump regime.”Trump has consistently denied having knowledge of Epstein’s activities, which included the operation of a sex-trafficking ring that procured teen girls for wealthy and influential associates. Epstein killed himself in 2019 while in federal custody.Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, in a lunchtime press briefing at the White House, called the release of the emails “a manufactured hoax by the Democratic party” to distract from the reopening of the government.She also expanded on an earlier statement in which she identified the unnamed victim in the redacted email as Virginia Giuffre, who named Epstein, Maxwell and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the former prince, among her abusers, but never publicly accused Trump.In her posthumous memoir, Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice, Giuffre said she was recruited by Maxwell from Mar-a-Lago, where she worked as a teenager. She died by suicide in April aged 41.“Ms Giuffre, and God rest her soul, maintained that there was nothing inappropriate she ever witnessed, that President Trump was always extremely professional and friendly to her,” Leavitt said.“It’s a question worth asking the Democratic party why they chose to redact that name of a victim who has already publicly made statements about her relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and is, unfortunately, no longer with us.”Leavitt insisted that “these emails proved absolutely nothing other than the fact that President Trump did nothing wrong”.Democrats, however, have accused the White House of covering up Trump’s alleged involvement and have consistently called on Pam Bondi, Trump’s attorney general, to release documents about the scandal, which have come to be known as the Epstein files.In a statement, the oversight committee’s ranking member, Robert Garcia, said: “The more Donald Trump tries to cover up the Epstein files, the more we uncover. These latest emails and correspondence raise glaring questions about what else the White House is hiding and the nature of the relationship between Epstein and the president.”Other Democrats joined calls for more transparency from the White House.Ro Khanna, a California Democratic representative, said that this was “exactly why” he was working with the Republican representative Thomas Massie to force a House floor vote on the full release of the Epstein files.“The public deserves transparency and the survivors deserve justice,” he said.In a post to X, Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota senator, wrote: “Americans deserve the full truth. The administration needs to keep its promise and release the Epstein files.”A vote could come quickly as the House prepares to reconvene Wednesday after the lengthy government shutdown.The Republican speaker, Mike Johnson, who has wavered on the release of the full tranche of Epstein investigation records, has said he will swear in Arizona’s newly elected representative Adelita Grijalva, set to be the 218th signature needed on a discharge petition that would force a vote.“Republicans are running a pedophile protection program. They are intentionally hiding the Jeffrey Epstein files,” Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, said on Tuesday, accusing Johnson of delaying Grijalva’s swearing-in for seven weeks to defend Trump.Maxwell, meanwhile, is seeking a commutation of her sentence from Trump, according to Democrats on the House judiciary committee.The supreme court last month rejected Maxwell’s appeal to overturn her criminal conviction.Additional reporting by Shrai Popat More

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      Colbert on Trump ‘building a massive compensation for his weird tiny penis’

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      Late-night hosts spoke about the controversial behavior of a small group of Democrats and Donald Trump’s continued destruction of the White House.Stephen ColbertOn The Late Show, Stephen Colbert spoke about the vote to end the federal government shutdown which has seen some Democrats choosing to cave to Republican demands without restoring the healthcare subsidies which were initially threatened.Chuck Schumer told his party he would give the deal neither a blessing nor a curse and would give no steer on how to vote.Colbert joked that this was “bold leadership” and commented on Schumer’s “failure” in the situation.The shutdown has caused major chaos at airports as air traffic controllers were being unpaid for so long that many of them stopped coming to work.On social media, Trump attacked them, saying they would be “substantially docked” and he would hold “a negative mark” at least in his mind against their record.“A negative mark in that mind?” Colbert quipped. “You know what, I’ll take my chances.”He also wrote that he wanted them to be “quickly replaced by true patriots” to which Colbert responded: “Maybe I’m alone, but I don’t care if the guy landing my plane is a true patriot.”He called Trump “an old nepo-billionaire who simply does not understand how hard it is for regular people to survive these days”.This week also saw that regular people are not happy with the state of living, with a consumer satisfaction survey falling to 52.3%, the worst ever score dating back to 1951.“Consumers have not felt this bad since we fed our babies cigarettes,” he said.This week also saw Trump tout a 50-year mortgage in a supposed bid to help those struggling to afford home ownership, yet a study showed that interest would almost double from the standard 30-year mortgage.Colbert called it “a big dumb policy that fixes nothing”.He also warned that a new 107% tariff could lead to Italian pasta disappearing from shelves. “We are officially in a pasta-mergency,” he said.Colbert joked that Trump’s destruction of the White House’s East Wing was “to build a massive compensation for his weird tiny penis” before moving on to his latest addition: labelling the Oval Office.The host claimed that the font being used was called “luxury assisted living” before showing that when you Google it, the same font that comes up.Seth MeyersOn Late Night, Seth Meyers started by talking about the House speaker, Mike Johnson, ordering Congress to return to Capitol Hill for the vote.“I’m sure they would if only the flights weren’t all grounded,” he said.This week also saw Trump write “Less crime more Trump” on social media. “Less crime sounds great but how could there be more Trump?” Meyers asked, before adding: “We’re maxed out on Trump.”Last week saw Joe Biden speak for 30 minutes at a fundraising dinner. Meyers expressed surprise that it was so short, joking that “he usually speaks that long to the valet”.Transportation secretary and former Real World contestant Sean Duffy warned Americans that ongoing issues over flights might mean that many will miss celebrating the holidays with their families.“Oh no, I was so excited to discuss that Zohran win with my uncle,” Meyers said. More

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      Yes, New York will soon be under new management. But Zohran Mamdani is just the start | Carys Afoko

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      A relatively unknown thirtysomething parachuted on to the national stage and into high political office. Energising to some of the Democratic base but lacking support from the party establishment. Not Zohran Mamdani but Lina Khan, who Joe Biden appointed to chair the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in 2021 when she was just 32. Khan, who left her role at the FTC when Trump returned to the White House, is now one of five women appointed to the mayor-elect of New York’s transition team.Khan is the most exciting pick for a few reasons. She entered the FTC with an ambitious mandate to transform the government agency, broaden its focus to increase scrutiny of corporate mergers and do more to protect consumers – and got results. She brought down the price of inhalers (routinely being sold for hundreds of dollars) by tackling price gouging by pharmaceutical companies. She blocked a huge supermarket merger and returned more than $60m to Amazon drivers in unpaid tips. All of her achievements were delivered in four years, while navigating a bureaucracy that was sometimes hostile to her leadership.Mamdani has a mandate from New Yorkers, but he can expect opposition from the rich and powerful, as well as many Democrats, to some of his flagship policies. Khan, who made her name calling out big tech monopolies, knows first-hand what it’s like to have influential opponents. After she was confirmed in post at the FTC with bipartisan support, Meta and Amazon tried to get her to recuse herself from investigating them. In the 2024 presidential race, two billionaire Democratic donors publicly called on Kamala Harris to fire Khan if she became president. The Daily Show host Jon Stewart claimed that Apple was resistant to him even interviewing the FTC chair on his podcast because of her views. Big tech and Wall Street execs have already been grumbling about her latest appointment, seeing it as a “shot across the bow”. What better sign that the mayor-elect is on the right track? More

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      Texas’s Eagle Pass voters turned to Trump. A year later, some have doubts

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      Along southern Texas, the Rio Grande forms the US-Mexico border, an arrangement established after the end of the Mexican-American war. Eagle Pass, which had been known as El Paso del Águila, became the first US settlement on the Rio Grande.Swimming across the river has remained treacherous ever since. But migrants never stopped risking their lives to set foot on US soil – and in 2023, those numbers reach record highs as Eagle Pass, the seat of Maverick county, became the epicenter of growing backlash over the Biden administration’s immigration policies.In 2024, for the first time in a century, the Hispanic-majority border county voted for a Republican: Donald Trump. Trump won 14 out of 18 counties along the southern border, gaining the most support there of any Republican in three decades. But he made his biggest gains in Maverick, with 59% of the votes, increasing his support by 14% from 2020.While many supported Trump’s policies on border security, one year later some residents in Eagle Pass are increasingly uncomfortable with the tactics the administration has used across the country in keeping with its mass deportation agenda. Since Trump’s inauguration, federal agents have disrupted communities as they arrest parents who are with their children, show up at schools or daycare facilities, and accidentally sweep up US citizens.The intensity of the national crackdown is jarring for residents like Manuel Mello III who have been on the frontlines of border issues for decades. The chief of the Eagle Pass fire department, Mello explained that border crossings have always been part of the city’s history.Mello said his grandmother would pack food and water for those migrants that passed by. She would give them las bendiciones, or blessings in Spanish, and send them off. But what he saw at the Rio Grande in the last year of the Biden administration was unlike anything he had witnessed in his 33 years in the fire department.“We would get between 30 to 60 emergency calls a day about migrants crossing the river with a lot of injuries, some with broken femurs or this lady who had an emergency childbirth,” Mello said.In all 2024, the Eagle Pass fire department received more than 400 emergency calls and reported eight drownings. This year, the department has responded to fewer than 100 calls and reported only three drownings, according to numbers shared with the Guardian.“Now Eagle Pass has gone back to normal, but this is still a broken system. Because you’re deporting people doesn’t mean that you’re fixing it,” Mello said.A mile away, Ricardo Lopez and a group of friends gathered at a McDonald’s, as they do every week, to discuss some of the challenges facing Eagle Pass, a town in which 28,o00 people live.Not long after ordering coffee, Lopez and his friends, all bilingual men of Mexican descent, realized it has been almost a year since the last elections. They remembered the evolution of what was then an extraordinary series of events: from thousands of migrants swimming across the Rio Grande each day to foreign journalists wandering the town’s streets and Texas national guard troops grabbing lunch at local restaurants.“I think most people that live here can agree that it was the illegal immigration that was causing all the problems and that [Joe] Biden didn’t respond to the needs of the border,” said Lopez, 79, who recently ran for city council in Eagle Pass and lost. “After the last election I asked some of my friends, why did you vote for Trump? And they put it back to me: don’t you see what is happening? Though I don’t like the guy, he fixed the problem.”Just hours after taking office for a second time, Trump signed an order declaring a national emergency that allowed additional US troops to arrive at the southern border. But Trump didn’t only try to cut down on illegal immigration. The administration also terminated a mobile phone app created under Biden known as CBP One, which had allowed tens of thousands of people waiting in Mexico to cross into the US legally and apply for asylum.Since then, residents like Lopez have seen a dramatic change in Eagle Pass.At the height of the spike in migration in December of 2023, the border patrol recorded over 2,300 crossings a day in the Del Rio sector, home to Eagle Pass. In September of this year, it averaged just 30 crossings a day there, government data shows.Joshua Blank, research director of the Texas Politics project, a nonpartisan polling initiative by the University of Texas at Austin, said Maverick county was a reflection of broader political dynamics in the state, where Republicans were seeking to expand their appeal in blue-collar areas, including among Latinos.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Texas is a changing competitive landscape and more diverse than the country as a whole. If you try to appeal to Hispanics based on their Hispanicness, you might be missing the mark. And I think Democrats have probably failed in engaging with this group of people,” Blank said.Shortly after Biden entered the White House, Texas’s governor, Greg Abbott, had also launched Operation Lone Star in a bid to deter illegal immigration. The effort quickly raised concerns about its tactics, including the busing of thousands of migrants to Chicago, New York and Washington DC.As part of the initiative, an 80-acre base camp was built in Eagle Pass to house 1,800 Texas national guard soldiers. Troops deployed there by Texas and other Republican-led states have been seen standing on the US side of the border setting up coils of razor wire along the banks of the Rio Grande, ordering migrants to swim back to Mexico.Texas says Operation Lone Star had led to more than 500,000 apprehensions of undocumented people.On a recent afternoon, the Guardian observed armed Texas national guard troops walking and watching over the US-Mexico border atop shipping containers. No migrants were seen crossing the river from Mexico. In Piedras Negras, there wasn’t razor wire preventing access to the Rio Grande.While the migration dynamics have changed at the border, some longtime residents are not just concerned about the impact on people. They’re also worried about the degradation of the environment as a result of Trump and Abbott’s crackdown.Abbott used a natural disaster declaration to install floating buoys separated by saw-blades in the river as a part of Operation Lone Star. Shortly after, Jessie Fuentes, the owner of a kayaking company in Eagle Pass, filed a lawsuit, seeking to stop the installation of floating barriers.“The river was part of my grandfather’s upbringing, my father’s upbringing and mine, more than 200 years of experience as a family, and now it’s been mistreated with this militarization,” said Fuentes.“The river can’t defend itself so I sued the Texas government.” More

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      Gen Z’s ‘first lady’: how Rama Duwaji, Mamdani’s wife, speaks to a new era of political fashion

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      It is the most traditional of assets for any ambitious young male politician: a fashionably dressed, beautiful young wife. But as with everything else about the rise of Zohran Mamdani, his wife, Rama Duwaji, represents a new era of politics which speaks to a new generation of voters.Married to the soon-to-be leader of the biggest city in the US, Duwaji, 28, is arguably the US’s first generation Z “first lady”. Duwaji is an artist and illustrator of Syrian heritage, whose work explores themes of Arab identity, female experience and social justice. Working in paint, line-drawing, ceramics and animation, she graduated with a master’s degree in fine art from New York’s School of Visual Arts in 2024. Her thesis was titled Sahtain!, an Arabic expression which translates as “bon appetit”, and explored the communal act of making and sharing a dish and its role in Middle Eastern culture.View image in fullscreenIt is fair to assume that one does not pursue a career as a socially conscious artist contributing line drawings to niche left-leaning publications with the aim of becoming a global celebrity. But Duwaji’s life took an unexpected turn when, in 2021, she met Mamdani. The couple married in February this year, about eight months before Mamdani was elected mayor of New York City, and Duwaji was thrust into the spotlight as New York City’s 28-year-old first lady. In the week since Mamdani’s triumph, Vogue headlines have included “Zohran Mamdani and Rama Duwaji Are Making Finding Love on Hinge Seem Possible Again” and “Fall’s Next Cool-Girl Haircut Is Officially the Rama”.View image in fullscreenFirst lady is one of the most high-profile spots in US politics and culture. From Eleanor Roosevelt’s civil rights advocacy to Hillary Clinton’s healthcare reforms, the political wives of the White House have long been impactful players on the political scene. As the first lady of a city, rather than the nation, the stakes are more muted for Duwaji – but the buzz around her husband is shining a spotlight on both of the new inhabitants of Gracie Mansion.New York City last had a first lady when Chirlane McCray, Bill de Blasio’s wife, oversaw a portfolio of mental health programs with a budget of $850m. (Eric Adams, the current mayor, is unmarried.) But the position has a significance that extends far beyond policy. First ladies are expected to fulfil the role of America’s sweetheart, embodying shared values and semaphoring tone with every public appearance. Michelle Obama’s recent comments, characterising the media’s fixation with her toned arms in sleeveless dresses as a strategy to “otherize” her as a Black woman, illustrate the extent to which the first lady discourse can become a cultural battleground around the status of women and people of colour, while the ongoing psychodrama about Melania Trump’s non-appearance on the cover of American Vogue speaks to an enduring fascination with the first lady as a poster girl for the US itself.View image in fullscreenDuwaji’s victory-speech look was sober: all-black, with a high neck and calf-length skirt, and silver jewellery. But her low-key style did not deflect a feverish online reaction, with her chic dark bob and vintage-style boatneck top bringing instant comparisons to Audrey Hepburn. The outfit was notable for being consistent with Duwaji’s personal style, rather than a cut-and-paste political wife style. (“Rama Duwaji Is New York City’s First Lady, and She’s Not Wearing a Sheath Dress,” noted Harper’s Bazaar magazine approvingly.) Fashion industry paper Women’s Wear Daily reported her style choices under the headline “Rama Duwaji’s Election Night Look Bridges Brooklyn and the Middle East”, noting that Duwaji’s denim top, embellished with laser-etched embroidery, was by the Palestinian-Jordanian designer Zeid Hijazi. The choice of a Palestinian designer was widely interpreted as a deliberate and political choice by Duwaji, who has expressed clear and vocal support for the plight of Gaza. Duwaji’s velvet and lace Ulla Johnson skirt and silver Eddie Borgo earrings showed support for two independent New York designers drawn from outside the traditional high-status Manhattan names – Oscar de la Renta, Carolina Herrera and Michael Kors – with whom modern first ladies have been most associated.View image in fullscreenIn their style and in the story of their relationship, Mamdani and Duwaji blend youthful energy with traditional elements. Mamdani maximises his youthful advantage as a digital native and uses social media as a political broadcast channel, but does so while wearing the most traditional of outfits: a dark suit and tie. Duwaji, likewise, steers clear of the first lady cosplay of a pastel skirt suit, but her quirky retro-tinged elegance has a ladylike tone, albeit one forged in the vintage boutiques of Brooklyn rather than the department stores of Fifth Avenue. She has a taste for chunky flat boots and oversized white shirts, layered necklaces and winged black eyeliner. These are recognisable as the authentic style choices of a 28-year-old woman, but they do not present as challenging or radical. Likewise, their love story is both strikingly modern – the two met on Hinge – and solidly traditional in being formalised by marriage. Wedding photos shared on Mamdani’s Instagram show the couple holding hands on the subway as they travel to city hall, Duwaji wearing a vintage coat and her trademark flat boots with a short white dress, Mamdani carrying an umbrella. Their combination of romcom-worthy New York spirit and down-to-earth, affordability-conscious relatability has charmed the public.View image in fullscreenIn the ultimate cultural flex, Duwaji has already had a vibe shift named after her. “Aloof wife autumn” is trending on social media after a New York Post headline reported that the new mayor-elect’s “aloof wife … quietly steered his campaign from behind the scenes”. Duwaji’s husband is conspicuously absent from her Instagram page, where she posts street selfies in chic monochrome outfits and “things I saw that made me want to make art”. Her creative purpose and cool-toned self-possession are in striking contrast to the docile, gingham-aproned “tradwife” aesthetic that has stormed the TikTok algorithms in recent years.As a visual artist, Duwaji is aware of the power of image-making. She is also comfortable moving in the circles of the more avant garde end of the fashion industry, recently attending a catwalk show for Diotima, which is helmed by Rachel Scott, an American designer of Jamaican heritage who is a rising industry star. Scott, who dedicated the collection to “the honour of all displaced persons”, said that she invited Duwaji because she was “intrigued by her work and her personal style”.The stylist Bailey Moon, who helped Dr Jill Biden with her wardrobe throughout her tenure as first lady, was last week reported to have been working with Mamdani and Duwaji. Bailey, who is also credited with the recent high-fashion makeover of actor Pamela Anderson, is an experienced political stylist, who told Vogue that clothes “are part of the conclusion people make of an event or an appearance”. However, Moon told the New York Post that he was not on the Mamdani payroll, noting that he “shared some advice” but that no fee was charged.View image in fullscreenFor many young New York voters, who have not until now felt themselves represented in civic life, Duwaji’s style is more than ornament. It represents a shift in what public leadership can look like, and speaks to voters who are accustomed to absorbing news and understanding values through visual clues and messages. The biggest city in the US is about to rewrite the first lady myth for a new generation. More

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      John F Kennedy’s grandson Jack Schlossberg announces run for US House seat

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      John F Kennedy’s grandson Jack Schlossberg has said he will run for the US House next year, announcing Tuesday that he was seeking a key New York seat set to be vacated by longtime Democrat Jerry Nadler.“This district should have a representative who can harness the creativity, energy and drive of this district and translate that into political power in Washington,” Schlossberg said in a campaign video posted on social media late Tuesday.In an email to supporters, Schlossberg, a Democrat, said that his campaign will officially launch on Wednesday.Schlossberg has drummed up a large following on social media with frequent posts weighing in on national issues, including taking aim at his mother’s cousin, health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr.Last month, he posted on Instagram an image of a Halloween costume for “MAHA Man,” in reference to Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again message and described it as including such things as measles.Nadler, who is serving his 17th term in Congress, announced in September that he will not run for reelection next year, suggesting to the New York Times that a younger Democratic lawmaker in his seat “can maybe do better, can maybe help us more.”The 12th District includes Manhattan’s Upper West Side, Upper East Side and midtown.A political commentator and writer whose work has been published in such news outlets as The Washington Post, Politico and Time magazine, Schlossberg joins a crowded field of contenders already vying for the 12th congressional district seat.His decision to run comes as Democrats are hoping to regain control of the House in the 2026 midterm elections and thus a measure of legislative clout they currently lack in opposing the agenda of Republican president Donald Trump.“There is nothing our party can’t do to address costs of living, corruption and the constitutional crisis that we’re in,” Schlossberg was quoted as saying in an interview with the New York Times. “But without the control of Congress, there’s almost nothing that we can do.”Schlossberg’s entry into congressional politics follows the meteoric rise of another younger New York millennial, Zohran Mamdani, 34, the state assemblyman who was elected last week as mayor of New York City.“If Zohran Mamdani and I have anything in common, it’s that we are both trying to be authentic versions of ourselves and meet people where they are and communicate with people in New York City and be present and show up for people,” Schlossberg told the Times.With Reuters and Associated Press More